Light Touch
Fringe Science
A historical, and etymological, dive into polariscopes.
Stress-induced birefringence of an object placed between two crossed polarizers. [Zephyris / Wikimedia Commons]
When people working with laboratory glassware want to be certain that the piece they’ve made is stress-free, they place it in a device consisting of two sheets of polaroid, parallel to each other and with their polarization axes crossed. A diffuse light source behind this setup illuminates the entire view of the item.
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